That was it. Shrike had used up all her slack.
There was no arguing with the “Unsatisfactory” that she was assigned for the Class Strike mission. It was unsatisfactory, and it had nothing to do with esoteric skills like radar intercepts or weapon employment or sorting out who you were going to shoot with your missile. She had demonstrated an unsafe tendency in basic formation flying—the essence of all fighter tactics.
Shrike’s problems came down to the old catch-all: situational awareness. If you couldn’t effect a simple join-up with the other fighters in your flight, you were considered to be short in the SA department.
Back at Cecil Field, the commanding officer ordered a FNAEB to be convened for Lieutenant Sallly Hopkins.
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They called it the Room of Pain. It was a conference room on the second deck of the VFA-106 hangar. In it was a long table. On one side sat the four members of the board, and on the other, the aviator whose career was now on the line.
FNAEBs were yet another layer of the eternal Fine Mesh, the weeding-out of naval aviators on their way up the ziggurat. A FNAEB was a ritual, everyone figured, that had its origins in the Spanish Inquisition. Or possibly the Salem witch trials. It all the merry frivolity of third-degree interrogation, flogging, walking the plank, and tar-and-feathering.
FNAEBs were conducted with dismal regularity at RAGs like VFA-106, where untested young naval aviators often stumbled on the way to becoming fleet-qualified strike fighter pilots. In more than half such evaluation boards, the student would be found worthy of retention and returned to the training pipeline. The student would receive a few extra periods of training, and in most cases would graduate and leave the whole nasty experience behind.
But not always. In certain instances, when a nugget had shown himself—or herself—to be an airborne hazard to most forms of human life, including their own, the board would recommend that training be terminated.
The board would choose one of several dispositions: The aviator might be transferred to another “community” of naval aviation, say transports, or patrol planes, or helicopters. Or grounded altogether, removed from flying duty. The gold wings on the breast would become purely honorific, like a medal from a forgotten war. In the most unredeemable of cases, the aviator would not only be removed from flying status but would be “undesignated”—stripped of the precious wings of gold.
De-winged. For an aviator, it amounted to the ultimate humiliation.
Because Shrike Hopkins was a senior lieutenant, two lieutenant commanders were assigned as members of her FNAEB. A third, the head of the board, was a Navy commander from the staff of the Atlantic Fleet Strike Fighter Wing.
From the beginning everyone knew this was not going to be an ordinary, open-and-shut evaluation board. Shrike let it be known she was going to play the gender card. But she had also been keeping a secret: She was having pains—real pains—in her abdomen. And lately they had been getting worse.
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One by one, the instructor pilots were called before the board and asked to make written statements. They were supposed to recount incidents they remembered about Shrike’s training flights. And they were asked for opinions about her aptitude for duty as a strike fighter pilot.
It was an outpouring of anger. Shrike’s troubled relations with the instructor pilots came tumbling down like a spring avalanche. Most of the opinions were derogatory:
“I would not want to serve with her in my command because. . .”
“She is putting excessive pressure on herself because she is a female aviator in a male community. . .”
“She is too defensive and adversarial. . .”
“She is not humble enough.”
“She takes the slightest criticism poorly and is very resentful. . .”
The commander with whom Shrike had gotten into the “verbal assault” scrap at Fallon was asked to make a statement. Would he want her in his squadron? “No,” he answered. And why? “Because she’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
Not all the statements were so damning. A few instructors did think Shrike had the potential to do well as a fighter pilot. One was Barney Barnes. Would Barney be willing to serve in a fleet squadron with her? “Yes,” he answered without hesitation.
She also provided copies of fitness reports written by her previous commanding officers. Her performance, said one of the skippers, “was exemplary. She is an officer of the highest caliber, and will be a strong achiever in her future career.”
Shrike had to laugh when she read that part. Future career. Some future career, she thought. Her future career was being decided by people who hated her guts. People who thought she was “more trouble than she was worth!”
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The board deliberated for nearly two weeks. On a Monday morning the senior officer of the FNAEB delivered the board’s findings—one-and-one-half inches thick—to the commanding officer of the RAG. Shrike’s recommended fate was contained in the last sentence of the cover letter:
“The board unanimously recommends that Lieutenant Hopkins’s flight status be terminated.”
It was the worst possible verdict. Terminated. De-winged. It meant the end of a career. The end of a dream. It was the most devastating event of Shrike Hopkins’s life.
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The pains were getting worse. For several weeks now Shrike had been ignoring them, sure that they must be in her head. She had read all about such ailments. Psychosomatic disorders were a common affliction of people under severe stress.
Stress. That sure as hell described her situation just now. If having what seemed to be the entire male contingent of the U. S. Navy on your heels like a pack of jackals could be considered stressful, then, yes, she was learning more than she ever wanted to know about stress.
The pain was in her abdomen. She had been feeling it ever since the fighter weapons detachment in Key West. Although she knew she couldn’t blame her erratic performance on the stomach pains, she knew it was going to look that way. She could already hear them talking about it in the ready room: Shrike was inventing some physical ailment to negate the report of the FNAEB. Just like a woman: She had an excuse for everything.
Then it got worse. The pain came in waves, seeming to swell and intensify each day as the FNAEB lurched toward its dismal and damning conclusion.
Now this. Now her stomach felt like a vat of molten lava. She didn’t care anymore whether the pain was psychosomatic or a voodoo curse, and she most certainly didn’t give a flying flatus what they were saying about her in the ready room. It hurt like hell, and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. She turned herself in to the naval hospital for tests.
It wasn’t in her head at all. The pain she had been feeling was in her abdomen—and it was real. In a two-hour surgery, a grapefruit-sized tumor was removed from her right ovary.
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The board’s report worked its way up the chain of command. A FNAEB’s decision was a recommendation, not a final disposition. It would be reviewed by the commanding officer of the RAG, then the commodore of the strike fighter wing, going all the way up to CNAL—Commander, Naval Air Forces, Atlantic—who was a three-star admiral.
Endorsing the FNAEB’s report on Shrike Hopkins would be one of Captain Matt Moffit’s last tasks as commanding officer of the RAG. Moffit was on his way to a grander assignment—command of a carrier air wing, the ultimate flying job in naval aviation. It was the last rung before promotion to the rank of admiral. The last thing Matt Moffit needed was The Gender Thing running amok in his command.
He disagreed with the FNAEB’s recommendation—but only a little. He thought that “undesignating” her—removing her wings of gold—was unwarranted. Moffit recommended that Shrike change “communities,” meaning that she go fly something else—transports, anti-submarine airplanes, helicopters. Anything but strike fighters.
And so it went, up the chain of command. The commodore of the strike fighter wing, Captain Fleming, dittoed Captain Moffit’s recommendation: Let her keep her wings, but send her somewhere else. Anywhere but strike fighters.
From there the report landed on the desk of Admiral “Sweepea” Allen, who commanded all the naval air forces in the Atlantic fleet. Allen had the final say. With a thumbs up or down he could decide the fate of officers like Lieutenant Hopkins. And before he decided, he wanted to have a talk with her.
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Shrike had never felt so alone in her life. Even before the acrimony of the board hearings, she had sensed a chasm widening between her and the other nuggets. Each time she clashed with the instructors in the RAG, her fellow students scuttled for cover. Shrike was a lightning rod, they had decided, and anyone who knew what was good for them was staying out of range.
Not everyone stayed away. A handful of instructors, notably Barney Barnes, came by to see how she was doing. Barney told her he hoped she would be back in the cockpit soon. He said he looked forward to seeing her someday in the fleet.
Her classmates in 2-95 had all checked in by telephone. Each made the same polite inquiries: How’re ya doing. . . What’s the prognosis. . . Keep your chin up. . . Hope you get back on your feet soon. . . See you around. . . Well, gotta run now. . .
And that was it.
So much for class camaraderie and the brotherhood of pilots. So much, for that matter, for the sisterhood of pilots. She sure wasn’t hearing much in the way of support from the other women aviators out there. It was as though they were relieved that Shrike Hopkins wouldn’t be attracting any more unfavorable attention to women in naval aviation. Even Angie Morales, the only other woman in strike fighter training, was keeping a safe distance.
Shrike felt like a lost child. But she could understand their attitude. From her time in the Naval Academy and then in flight training, she knew about casualties. She knew that once you’ve stumbled and fallen behind the pack, your colleagues didn’t come running Samaritan-like to your aid. Whatever it was you had, they didn’t want to catch it. It was nothing personal, just a matter of winners and losers. That was the way it worked in the Fine Mesh.
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Shrike Hopkins was continuing her string of abominably bad luck. She had been home from the hospital for a week. She was still weak and unsteady on her feet. One night she was on her way to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and something happened—she didn’t remember what. She lost her equilibrium and fell, knocking herself senseless and opening a large gash in her head. Her neighbor found her on the floor, dazed and bleeding. Back to the hospital Shrike went for more stitching and more tests.
Two days later, her surgical incision split open. She was back on the table, undergoing yet another medical procedure.
Shrike was beginning to feel like a one-woman medical experiment. She was spending more time in the hospital these days than anywhere else. The medical technicians had even presented her with a new name tag. Instead of Shrike, they had a more appropriate call sign: Lab Rat.
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Shrike had changed. She had lost weight, probably due as much to the stress of the FNAEB as to her medical condition. She looked not only slimmer but, to everyone’s surprise, softer, as though the medical ordeal had excised some of her legendary contentiousness. To whomever she met when she visited the squadron, even the instructors, she managed a cheerful smile.
Still recovering from the latest round of stitching and re-stitching, Shrike packed her bag and journeyed northward to the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, to make her pitch to the admiral. It would be her last chance to save her sinking career as a fighter pilot.
Admiral Richard Allen was a bespectacled naval flight officer who had survived each of the Navy’s upheavals—the Cold War, Vietnam, Tailhook—since beginning his career in 1959 as a naval aviation cadet. He seemed sympathetic. Allen listened to Shrike’s version of the events that led to the FNAEB. He asked questions about her relations with the instructors in the RAG. He seemed particularly interested in the problem of integrating women into the Atlantic Fleet combat squadrons.
This was Allen’s last tour of duty before he retired. The Navy had already taken flak from the media in recent months over The Gender Thing. They’d had the Hultgreen crash, the post-Tailhook witch hunts, a spate of sexual harassment charges. Allen wanted to head off another firefight over the Gender Thing here on his doorstep.
When he finished with his questions, Admiral Allen reached a decision: Lieutenant Hopkins could keep her wings. She could keep everything. He was throwing out the FNAEB recommendation. In the admiral’s opinion, her case involved too many extenuating circumstances, and the board had overstepped its purview. It had gotten personalities mixed up with performance.
Shrike would be reinstated in the F/A-18 strike fighter training pipeline and resume training.
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The admiral’s decision hit Cecil Field and the RAG like an incoming Scud. The instructors who had clashed with Shrike during her training were outraged.
Whaaaaat? Why the hell do they bother to appoint evaluation boards if they’re gonna throw out any decision they don’t like? It means you can’t fail—if you’re a female!
It was impossible for anyone to be neutral about the matter. To the outraged instructors, it was a clear signal that political correctness had become the order of the day. Excellence, integrity, quality of product—all had been thrown to the hogs. The Fine Mesh had been replaced with a gender-based quota system.
To women like Shrike it meant something else. It was a signal, at least for the moment, that justice would be served. A woman pilot had finally received fair treatment. It wasn’t a man’s Navy any longer; there really was a place for women like Shrike Hopkins.
Shrike had won a victory—against her male opponents. But before she could ever fly Hornets again, she had to win yet another battle: She had to regain her physical qualification to fly. And that was beginning to look like an even tougher fight than the Gender Thing.
She had a growing list of maladies—the after effects of the tumor, the blow to her head, a pituitary gland problem—that threatened to keep her off flight status indefinitely. She felt like she was earning the new call sign: Lab Rat.
The flight surgeon gave her the bad news: She might be grounded for a year. Maybe longer. Maybe forever.